1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a recoil starter, wherein a recoil rope wound around a rope reel is pulled to rotate the rope reel so that a rotation of the rope reel is transmitted to a rotating member such as a drive pulley or the like coupled to a crankshaft of an engine via a ratchet mechanism, to thereby start the engine.
2. Description of the Related Art
Among recoil starters where a rotation of a rope reel rotated by pulling a recoil rope wound around the rope reel is transmitted to a cam, and a rotation of the cam is transmitted to a rotating member such as a flywheel magnet or a drive pulley coupled to a crankshaft of an engine via a clutch mechanism such as a centrifugal clutch, so that the crankshaft of the engine is rotated to start the engine, a recoil starter is known which is so constructed that the rope reel and the cam are resiliently coupled by a damper spring in the form of a spiral spring interposed between the rope reel and the cam, whereby the rotation of the rope reel is transmitted to the cam via the damper spring while shock to be transmitted to an operator's hand resulting from fluctuations of a load at the time the engine is started is absorbed (see, e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 5,287,832).
In this conventional technology, components constituting the recoil starter, such as the rope reel, the cam and the like, are received in a casing having a cup form. The casing is attached to the engine so as to face the crankshaft of the engine. There are problems in that, when the rope reel is formed to have a large outer diameter in order to reduce the pulling load of the recoil rope, the outer dimensions of the casing also becomes large, and when the casing is mounted to the engine, openings in the engine are blocked up, so that air for cooling the engine cannot be introduced into the inside of the engine, with the result that cooling of the engine cannot be efficiently conducted.
In this conventional technology, the cam rotated by the rope reel and the drive pulley attached to the crankshaft of the engine are disposed to face each other. Moreover, the clutch mechanism for transmitting the rotation of the cam to the drive pulley operates along the crankshaft so that mutually opposing end surfaces of the clutch mechanism and the drive pulley engage, whereby the rotation is transmitted to the drive pulley. Therefore, it is necessary to set the axial-direction dimension between the cam and the drive pulley to be large, leading to an increase in the dimension of the recoil starter in the axial direction, with the result that there is the problem that a reduction in size and weight cannot be achieved.